China Seeks to ‘Drive a Wedge’ Between Europe and US: EU Lawmaker

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attends a press conference during the North Sea Summit on offshore wind energy at the Port of Esbjerg, Denmark, on May 18, 2022. (Bo Amstrup/Ritzau Scanpix via Reuters)

European leaders are looking for a way to forge their own future as the Chinese regime continues to seek to “drive a wedge” between Europe and the United States, according to one European parliamentarian.

While leaders of the European Union are wary of the threat posed by communist China, Europe as a whole doesn’t advocate the wholesale decoupling of Sino–European relations often encouraged by U.S. lawmakers, according to Reinhard Butikofer, a member of the European Parliament.

Butikofer said most Europeans favored “de-risking,” referencing a term popularized by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Such a strategy would encourage more serious screening of Chinese investment in Europe without cutting the regime off completely and would seek to open up Europe to more trade and diplomacy with middle powers who don’t want to get caught in the growing enmity between China and the United States.

“That captures quite well a very common European perspective,” Butikofer said during an April 3 discussion at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.

“The concept is not to decouple. The concept is to keep developing the relationship but to make sure we are not on the losing side.”

Butikofer said the communist regime in Beijing would continue to “try to drive a wedge” between the EU and the United States but that both major powers would need to do more to not draw Europe into their rivalry and to recognize the EU as a power in its own right.

There are more than two powers whose futures are at stake, he said.

“This is not just a game between two major players, where everybody else is put into their place to wait and be told [what to do],” Butikofer said.

“It would be very helpful if Washington would avoid language that seems to coincide with language that we’ve heard from Beijing all the time, that this is all about two powers.”

China Seeking to Remake Global Order

Butikofer’s comments come on the eve of an April 4 visit to Beijing by von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Colleen Cottle, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, said Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping would likely use the event to further grow his image as a key international decision-maker and to push the EU and the United States apart.

“It offers [Xi] a chance to continue to play the role of international statesman,” Cottle said.

“This is part of his strategic vision to ... remake the global order.”

Xi likely fears that von der Leyen’s de-risking strategy is a move toward the U.S. sphere of influence, according to Cottle, and thus he'll likely try to drive wedges between the United States and Europe, as well as between European powers.

“He has to have seen the speech from von der Leyen as a shift closer to the U.S. position,” Cottle said.

Xi, Putin Aligning to Reshape Global Order

The upcoming visit comes roughly 13 months into Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine, which has sent shockwaves of fear through Europe about the potential for a renewed era of global conflict.

To that end, communist China has become a key strategic priority for Europe, as the regime has sought to consistently deepen ties with Russia throughout the war.

Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin first declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022, weeks before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the two leaders have worked to entwine their futures by collaborating on diplomatic, economic, and military issues.

The two leaders met in Moscow late in March to further develop their strategic alignment in an effort to “change” the international order to better accommodate their authoritarian visions for the future.

Putin issued a statement on March 20 that China and Russia would create a more just “multipolar world order” to replace the “rules” of the current international order.

Then, on March 21, Xi and Putin pledged to increase economic and strategic cooperation, signing a joint declaration to deepen their nations’ “comprehensive strategic partnership.”

Similarly, the CCP said in a statement at the time that the two nations “shared the view that this relationship has gone far beyond the bilateral scope and acquired critical importance for the global landscape and the future of humanity.”

China Could Be Arming Russia Against Ukraine

It’s currently uncertain to what extent, if any, the CCP has directly aided Russia’s war efforts in Europe.

Tan Kefei, a spokesperson for the CCP’s Ministry of National Defense, said on March 30 that “the Sino–Russian friendship has grown stronger over time” and that the Chinese and Russian militaries would “work together ... to fully implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state.”

For its part, the United States has warned that the CCP could provide weapons or munitions to the Russian military and has underscored that the regime hasn’t taken such an arrangement off the table.

Although the United States hasn’t acknowledged any such direct lethal aid yet, several reports suggest that the CCP is supplying the Russian military with capabilities intended for use on the battlefields of Ukraine.

A February report by German media outlet Der Spiegel claimed that China previously falsified shipping documents to disguise military aviation equipment bound for Russia as civil in nature and used intermediaries in the United Arab Emirates to deliver dual-use drones to Russia.

According to the same report, the CCP is also currently preparing a shipment of suicide drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.

Similarly, a report by Japan’s Kyodo News that cites anonymous U.S. government sources claims that Chinese ammunition has been found on battlefields in Ukraine. However, the report clarified that there was no evidence that the CCP sold the ammunition to Russia directly.